What's the difference between rosewood and indian rosewood?
 

Hi Everyone,

What's the answer to the above question tonally and aesthetically? I realised that the more expensive guitars uses Indian rosewood compared to the less expensive ones.

Thanks
Brian

Hey Brian,
there is no "Rosewood", in itself. Rosewood is merely a sub-species (Dalbergia) of which Indian Rosewood is a part of. There are many different Rosewoods....Indian,Brazilian,Amazon, Camatillo, etc.... to name a few.
But I do believe that majority of people refer to Indian Rosewood merely as "Rosewood".

hmmm....isn't Dalbergia a genus?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dalbergia

I guess you could say that! ;)

Hey, look at me! I'm smarter than a luthier :roll::roll::roll:

Hi Peter,

In reference to all solid wood construction, I noticed on some cheaper guitars like the Yamahas/Corts that the sales told me it's just rosewood, it's reddish in colour whereas on my Mcpherson which says East Indian rosewood, it is more towards a dark brownish/purplish hue.

Somehow aethestically it's nicer. I'm wondering tonally the different grades of rosewood, how would that differ?

Brian

I think the grade itself may not has as much of an impact on the tone as it may be more or less stable or visually less appealing.

East Indian VS Indian
 

is there any difference?

Yea. I want to know the answer too. :)

Generally "rosewood" is East Indian. It must be the most abundant, but I think there are different grades of it. The big question is usually whether a guitar is made from solid rosewood or laminate (rosewood over plywood). Solid rosewood is generally the preferred and those guitars cost significantly more..... Brazilian is supposedly the prefererred (among rosewood types) for sound qualities but most rare and by far most expensive, as far as I know anyways.....

Depending on who you talk to, you will get different answers to your quesion.

Some will say there is a significant difference bewteen, say, Brazilian and East Indian rosewood and others will disagree.

But I can tell you with some confidence that various rosewoods common to guitar making will have a sound in common that distinguishes them from other woods such as mahogany and maple.

If you're talking about high end Martins, Taylors etc vs low end imports you're likely talking about solid east Indian Rosewood (eir) versus eir laminates aka "rosewood".

Adds for the "big box" retailers will often say "rosewood back and sides" which is a dead giveaway for plywood. If it's solid eir they will always say so very plainly in the ad.

The laminates on lower end guitars could be a thin veneer of eir over a piece of luan plywood which explains the big difference in price. Bad plywood can have "voids", bad glues, etc all of which will negatively impact tone. Good multilayer sides are stable and with a decent solid wood top can be fine instruments.

I'm actually comparing solid rosewood guitars not laminates, particularly the Yamahas/Corts high end ones vs the Taylors/Mcphersons ones.

Specs say solid rosewood for the Yamahas/Cort ones which is reddish in color not so nice looking vs the Taylor/Mcpherson ones which says East indian rosewood which is brownish/purplish in color much nicer.

The labels "Indian Rosewood" and "East Indian Rosewood" both refer to the same wood. The word "East" was added by someone years ago to keep Americans from thinking it had something to do with Native Americans, sometimes called Indians because Columbus didn't know where the heck he was when he landed here. It doesn't mean that the rosewood is from "Eastern India."

Rosewood = Indian Rosewood = East Indian Rosewood. There is no standard requirement for labeling. Different builders label in different ways.
Sometimes people are just too lazy to label them to the most detail; or they want to purposely leave some ambiguity and room for guessing.;)
No big deal! :D

One is a subset of the other.

There are a LOT and I mean a LOT of rosewoods on the planet. My guess is that many of the less expensive manufacturers are purchasing it in bulk from Asian marketers. Because it would be cost and time prohibitive to catalog each and every piece as to it's specific species of Dalbergia they just call it rosewood.
I think it's inaccurate to assume that all "rosewood" guitars are East Indian. There's a TON of Indonesian rosewood out there and I'd be inclined to guess that there is close to as much (if not maybe more) of that than EIR.
I was at an exotic wood dealer once and was looking at the EIR. There was a plank that had more browns in it that I'm used to seeing so I pulled it out and investigated a little more. There was a sticker (not from the store but from their supplier) that said Indonesian Rosewood. The store owner told me," yeah, their the same thing, just marketed differently". Which is untrue but I'd bet you see a lot of Indonesian being sold as EIR.

That sounds very plausible :)

From the Wikipedia article on tonewoods:

That explains why some are "purple-ish" while others are "red-ish". But they're both (East) Indian Rosewoods.

the plantation grown stuff is pretty easy to spot, and while it will make a nice guitar, it is not nearly as nice as the old dense forrest grown lumber.

I really can't find anyone (luthier supplier) selling the old dark, dense, sets.

I dont think there is a lutheir that has been building for long that hasnt run into the "rosewood" issues. It seems as though every country has their own species of what they call rosewood, and some are not even rosewoods at all as in the case of Bolivian Rosewood (Pao Ferro). Not all true rosewoods are created equal also.

As far as the asian rosewood, it makes a pretty fair fingerboard, but I cant comment any further than that. It is dense and tough and at least some of it has a pretty nice ringtone. I dont know that I would want to build a guitar with it.

Good question indeed and glad somebody finally asked it!

Thank you all for your answers to my questions! :)